In 1939 German forces were sent to the border with Poland, according to the German Propaganda the German forces were acting in self-defense. This so called “self defense” became the Invasion of Poland or the 1939 Defensive War. This war lasted 1 month and 5 days and the result was Germany successfully invading Poland.
This happened 79 years ago, there is absolutely no way that in our modern, multicultural and mostly tolerant world this could happen, right? Well my friends, at this point I am no longer sure of the answer to this question. Let me explain why:
On April 3rd, 2018 I was coming back from school, laying on my bed and scrolling through my Facebook and then I saw this article news pop up “Human Wall if Trump Militarizes the Border: AMLO” . Knowing that President Trump isn’t the #1 fan of Mexico or any other Latin America country I decided to open the link and read it, it talked about presidential candidate Lopez Obrador discussing how he was going to create a human wall to protest in a pacific manner if Trump decided to send the National Guard to the border. After seeing Mr. Trump talk awful and hurtful things about the Latin Americans, seeing the deportations, his obsession with building a wall and most recently taking away DACA this news were honestly no surprise. Since I hadn’t heard anything in the news or seen any other articles I didn’t know it this was entirely true, so I decided to somewhat ignore it.
Later that same day more and more news started popping up on Facebook and Twitter, I heard my parents talk about these news and discussing about it, my dad then mentioned something that made me realize this was true news. Weeks before all of this we had drove to El Paso several times and had seen a lot of military movement, while it is not unusual to see movement because of the military base in El Paso this was way too much movement. For two weeks straight every single day we saw trucks carrying arms, we saw helicopters, we saw military trucks going to El Paso, we didn’t see any going from El Paso, which was pretty weird but we didn’t pay much attention to it.
The sudden realization of this sent a small chill down my spine but decided to not to pay attention and focus on other things. On that same day April 3rd at 16:45 another article came up, and this one was more serious. “SRE Demands clarification from Trump about the military deployment in the border”. It talked about how Mexico’s secretary of Foreign Relations Luis Videgaray posted on twitter that he “had requested the United States to clarify the announcement of President Donald Trump, on the use of the army at the border. “
On April 4th the White House said that Mr. Trump signed a presidential memorandum to send the National Guard Troops to the south border. Mr. Trump mentioned that this was in order to “Secure the Southern Border”. If you have not been paying attention to the news lately, in the past few days a caravan of immigrants from Latin America is making its way to the U.S-Mexico border where they plan to cross and they are determined that nothing will stop them. As the caravan is currently making its way through Mexico Mr. Trump called for immediate action from the Mexican government to stop this caravan. The organizers of the annual caravan said that this time they would disintegrate the caravan in the capital of Mexico and not in the border as it had originally been planned, but some of the immigrants are still making their way to the border, they have set their mind to something and they are not planning to stop.
The Mexican Government has done all the things in their power to stop the caravan to reach the border and they have made it clear that they do not agree or condole illegal immigration, but Mr. Trump has decided that Mexico hasn’t done enough and that the will be sending the National Guard to protect the borders until the infamous wall is built. Today April 5th, Mr. Trump said that he is sending around 2 thousand and 4 thousand National Guard members to secure their borders and stop illegal immigration as well as the drug traffic. President Bush and Obama both issued similar policies the white house is unsure how similar they will really be. They also mentioned that they will not have physical contact with the immigrants and will leave this to the customs agents. (Although in my personal opinion I don’t think this will be entirely true.)
Today, Mexican President Peña Nieto posted a video on Youtube where he talks about the these acts and where he states that Mexico will not permit negative rhetoric to define their actions and they are open to dialogue.
So today 79 years later after the Invasion of Poland we are facing something somewhat similar. Military troops sent to a border with the purpose of “self-defense” and “protection”. While this is all still developing and it might not be an invasion it is most certainly something that is very alarming and that is causing a lot of uncertainty and tension between both the U.S and Mexico. I know that Mr. Trump has a vivid hate for Latin Americans and mostly Mexicans that he has made very clear in several occasions, and because of that I fear what will happen after these actions that were taken. There is nothing more to do than just hope for the best.
All opinions are personal and do not reflect the views of HerCampus.